On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Christof Drescher wrote:RFC 2180 is informational. It is not standards-track. In part, RFC 2180 has been overtaken by events.I'm willing to learn. What events?
The past 6.5 years of implementation history.
This goes to a point like: Client implementors ignored this or that (namely RFC2180), so now you have to live with it.
Please remember that RFC 2180 was only informational, not standards-track, and it reflected the collective wisdom of 6 1/2 years ago. The fact that it prevaricates on certain issues should indicate to you that these issues were just as hotly debated then as now.
Certain of its recommendations have ceased to be good ideas (in fact, I believe that those were never good ideas) since client implementors ignored the possibility and server implementors choose to oblige those clients. In other words, the market decided the issue.
This doesn't affect the standards-track specification, since it did not rule on this issue. Perhaps a future standard will; but if it does I predict that it will be on the side of least-surprise to the client.
...
Is it worth updating 2180 to remove its erroneous recommendations (and maybe add new ones)?
--Grant
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